Hitchhiking US astronauts may have a long wait for a ride from the Russians

NY Times:

Prospects seemed to dim on Thursday for a timely launching of a Russian rocket that would carry American astronauts to the International Space Station next month, with Russian space officials temporarily grounding a similar rocket after one crashed shortly after takeoff on Wednesday.

With the end of NASA’s space shuttle program last month, American astronauts must travel into space on Russian Soyuz rockets. When one of them crashed over Siberia on Wednesday, concerns began to mount.

Russian space officials canceled the Friday launching of a Soyuz rocket that was to carry a navigation satellite for Glonass, the Russian equivalent of the American GPS system.

Prime Minister Vladimir V. Putin also ordered an overhaul of the safety procedures at the Russian space agency, according to his spokesman. The changes will affect how the agency checks rockets, satellites and space vehicles it buys from Russian manufacturers and will influence its prelaunching procedures.

In the accident on Wednesday, the rocket’s third and final stage shut down for reasons not yet known before the spacecraft had entered orbit. It arced back to earth with its cargo of fuel and food, including green apples and garlic cloves eagerly awaited by the space station’s crew.

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It was a mistake to shut down the shuttle program before there was an acceptable US alternative. The reliability problems of the Russian system will probably persist.